SOURCE: “Angst Up to the End,” in New Leader, October 1–15, 1990, pp. 21–2.

In the following review, Searles offers a positive assessment of Rabbit at Rest.

For sheer output and versatility, few writers can touch John Updike. Since his 1958 debut he has given us a play, four children's books, five collections of poetry, another five of essays—and, of course, the 24 volumes of superior fiction that have established his reputation as a major American author.

Updike's latest novel [Rabbit at Rest] completes a tetralogy about ex-basketball star Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, sometimes described as the Harvard-educated author's proletarian alter ego. Each of the books portrays Harry at a different stage of his troubled, unfulfilled life. Rabbit, Run (1960) introduces the young Harry: adulterous, confused, adrift. In Rabbit Redux (1971) Harry is 10 years older and still floundering, caught up...